i see the world through welded steel bars that fence around my body, masking armor, but realistically locking my free spirit inside the walls of flesh that make up my being
i walk around, bewildered to see other miraculous women of all ages, races, and orientations trapped behind the same impenetrable incarceration, trudging along sidewalks, tendons diminishing in their knees as the metal jail cells they live in is a weight incapable of being lifted with ease
i clang on the bars with a metal can, i am soothed by the sound of my own imprisonment, i am lulled to sleep by vibrations of the vague oppression encrusted into the cell of my cells
i have not thought to cry, i have not thought to fight, for i have no idea where tears could possibly find their way down from, their inexistence is almost certain to me
i see the world through welded steel bars, that close in tighter with every aortic pulse, with every respiratory heave
you may be thinking at least you can still see, which is true, yes, i am so glad to be able to see
i only wish, i could see more

"you're so, innocent"*, he said to me, eyes widening, soul opening, gritting his teeth letting this word take over my entire body, my body that would now belong to him, withholding his fingerprints like scratches on a penny
i absorbed his sentence and deflected it back out into the universe, for i never really considered myself as such, innocent.
what does it mean to be innocent, why did it excite him so much? was it my lack of experience? was it because he had never encountered someone with such purity in their heart? had he never touched the soul of someone who was comprised of mostly good intentions?
i realized his excitement really was just masking fear. he was afraid of me. if i wasn't using him, i was good. if i was good, i mattered. i don't think he had every considered the fact that a woman he was investing time with could matter. i don't think he was the type of person who wanted to care. so to fold up the fear like origami, and shape it into a facade, he began to express aggression. he was mean. i could not understand this. if i was so innocent, why was he trying to take this away from me? was the concept of my good character making him angry? i remember looking into his greenish eyes and feeling smoke in my lungs. my body polluted by his piercing stare, and i watched as his soul arose out of his shell, like fumes and dissipated into the air around me. the anger then turned to tiredness. i watched him sleep and i wondered if it could even be called that. i had never in my life seen someone in such deep, emotional pain that even when their body is resting their face is stiff and fragile as if he had been resting their his entire life, accumulating dust, hardening the cracks of his smile, cementing his ligaments until the possibilities of him standing again were not even questionable.
watching him, i thought about this innocence he described, and about how he was almost envious of it, how he wanted that for himself and somehow knew that he once owned that quality but somewhere along the lines of a wrong left turn or a path not chosen he had lost it. what he didn't know was that it was still there.
don't get me wrong, i had never met such a cold person in my entire life, but at the same time, he was like fire.
i rolled over next to him, holding his arms, comforting his sleeping body in hopes of him somehow regaining consciousness and becoming aware that he does not have to be so guarded, so cold, and so afraid of being vulnerable. i hoped he'd find the warmth he already has, but i too was tired, so i closed my eyes, and fell asleep.

I’ve too long engaged in the detrimental habit of searching for a man to complete me. though not completely uprisen to consciousness, it seemed as though i had this illogical desire to have a man who could hold me, as if the contents of my being were too much for myself to handle, as if i were in need of my preferred *** to grasp my supple skin fragments in their hands in efforts of assuring that the parts of me that i could not support would not fall to the ground and shatter like crystallized water droplets
i am immersed in a sexuo-economic society that constantly perpetuates the myth that a woman is a product of a man, woman has what the man can give to her and is nothing without the nurture and tender care a man is able to provide for her. man is happiness for the woman, man is prosperity for the woman, man is a woman’s confidence, man is her beauty, man is her life, for woman has none for her own
it is now that i have realized after searching for so long for someone to “love” me, for someone to look into my eye and drop to their knees in pure adoration, it is now that i realize when man is gone, who am i? i am my own. i am no one’s possession.
the thought itself was liberating to know that my existence depends on no other being but my own so i said it over and over, i am my own, i am my own, ****** i am mine an nobody else’s
i began to yell at the sky telling it that it lied when it was raining that night and tried to convince me that i was miserable and trapped in a world that did not appreciate me, just because it was melancholy and gloomy itself
an epiphany in that moment ; he did not matter to me. it was his very touch, the softness to his lips, the scratch of the hair on his chin, the desperation in his voice, that ran through my veins like a narcotic
once he was gone, i was alone, i thought i was losing my identity but it was in that moment that i started to become who i really was
i realized how many other women go through the same things i do, ignorantly believing that their life is dependent upon a man
how horrible it is to live in a constant state of delusion, believing ***-attraction could provide happiness for myself eternally, as if happiness was not able to reached within me already but rather hidden in the palms of the opposite ***
but you couldn’t understand that
no one could understand
so i told you, goodbye

the first time you broke my heart felt like every molecule in my body had been shaken like a carbonated drink inside a plastic bottle, containing the catastrophe and sheltering the insanity as if it were a home. i could not let anyone know how close i was to exploding, i could not be weak.
i walked around daily, replaying memories we had against the backs of my eyelids like a projector against a cement wall
i played it over and over until my stomach overflowed with churning bile, wanting to eject the inauthenticity of nostalgia
while watching i would try to make meaning of the dialogue, and you, being it’s main featured character
i made you out to be the hero but you were the villain, you destroyed the plot, you slaughtered the character’s lives, yet you were such a deceivingly good actor
have you ever heard something so many times that you started to go insane?
words can hit you so hard they start to feel like they’ve been carved into your brain, able to be sounded like keys on an everlasting piano, one note insisting for another to play along with it
but you’re not a song that i want to listen to anymore

the second time you broke my heart, i had it coming
i told myself this was it
every time i watched you blink i watched the doors to your soul close
have you ever let anyone in?
every kiss enabled another voice in my head telling me goodbye
but the best part about me letting you into my heart for a second time was that it didn’t really break
what i thought was my chest ripping open, withdrawing blood vessels and vitals, was really the nerves in my body connecting again, i can feel again
i can feel again
i am healing and here months later,
stitched up and intact
you can’t hurt me anymore

you kissed me and all i could think was i can’t believe the universe finally brought me back into your arms, your face shifted into a phrase and your eyes morphed into LED lights displaying the words “i’m in love with you” over and over like a conveyer belt of my introspection
you asked “why do you keep looking at me like that?” and i replied with an enigmatic giggle,
i remember thinking to myself “how could i not?”
lying next to you the only thoughts transmitted through the waves in my brain were lines of poems written with words i didn’t even know i knew, words that fully illustrated the beautiful way your head caressed the pillow and your eyelashes tickled my cheeks, the way the moment felt like an everlasting, indestructible photograph
i couldn’t believe it, i still can’t fathom i was lucky enough to float down from the clouds i laid on, hoping for a second chance, an escape from the perpetual wishing and wanting to stand on the ground next to you
i’m looking at you, and although i could never gather these thoughts with enough durability to communicate them to you whole-heartedly, and without them shattering from my lips, fracturing each letter, and smashing the essence
these pages will remember how i felt about you forever

i know you are far
and that's okay
because like the moon, i can see your light from galaxies away
i know you're vibrantly glowing, even though it isn't while you're by my side
too often i find myself seeking possession, yearning to hold you, watch you blossom in between my fingers like a flower
but flowers need to grow on their own, only held by the tender soil that surrounds them
you'll know when they're ready to be held
so i'll be here
comforted by thoughts of you growing into the beautiful flower that i already know you are
i'll let you light up the sky for everyone, i'll let you mingle with the stars and the night skies
and if you ever catch me looking up at you,
it's because i'll remember how blessed i am to be able to just see you
even if i'm not with you in the sky anymore
i am with you
i am far, too

i wonder if the stains on your sheets remember me
i wonder if the cells that make up the skin covering your soft lips died into thin cracked dust, because they couldn't rejoice with mine again
i wonder if the strands of your silky blonde hair fell off your head from the lost heat my hands used to provide them
i wonder if your eyes permanently dimmed once i left, because i was once their light
i wonder if your heart shivers knowing the fire in it has burned out
i wonder if your body remembers love
i wonder if what we had even was love
i wonder
i wonder
i wonder
but i will never know